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Abstract

Emotions are difficult to assess, even in humans. The attribution of jealousy in an animal like a dog is especially difficult because performance of a particular behavior in the context of another animal receiving a reward may not be easily distinguishable from intra-species competition or simply a response to a contextual cue for the availability of reward. The authors provide distinguishing evidence in the form of fMRI data to show that in the presence of a “fake” dog being fed, there is bilateral activation in the amygdala, an area associated with anxiety, anger, fear, and even jealousy in humans.

Author Biography

Thomas R. Zentallis the DiSilvestro Endowed Professor of Arts and Sciences and is a University Research Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY. With Edward Wasserman, he has edited Comparative Cognition: Experimental Explorations of Animal Intelligence (Oxford University Press) and The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Cognition.www.uky.edu/~zentall